Half of Humanity Now Lives In Mega-Cities

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Across the planet, we see the same process at work: all humans are pouring into a few mega-cities. This year, we reached the half-way point in this fatal process. This is a sign of overpopulation, habitat degradation or dying empires with the populations flowing into the capital because the countryside is dangerous. This historic force is another reason to fear a future war: annihilating populations concentrated in cities is how nature deals with overpopulation.

Humanity is about to undertake the greatest change of habitat in its entire history. Authoritative international reports to be published over the next months will show that, for the first time, we will soon be a predominantly urban species, with more people living in towns and cities than in the countryside.

Official United Nations figures show that the world's urban population has more than quadrupled over the past 50 years. Almost half of us inhabit towns and cities: within a quarter of a century 60 per cent of us will do so.

There are two tiers of city-building going on here: the First World cities are dead in the center but extend across many miles of countryside thanks to cheap energy and private transportation. In places like the USA where private transportation has been kept deliberately cheap, whole sectors are actually one giant megalopolis that stretches from the imperial capitol of Washington, DC, all the way to Boston, Massachusetts. One can easily see these mega-metropolises from space at night for they light up the countryside. The Los Angeles area is another giant structure. Since poor people use public transportation and since older buildings are usually inferior to newer ones, the American middle class tends to live as far as possible to cut land costs and provide privacy and to barricade themselves from the slums where crime lurks.

The only real exception to this spreading out is New York City which has more an Asian look to it: namely, the center of the city is the most expensive and the slums are in the more distant older suburbs. This means the center is vibrant and has a lot of money invested in it and the outer perimeters are poorer and more diffuse.

The other force at work in the First World nations is the rush to the seas. As the oceans are cleaned of pollution, beaches have become prime property. I remember when the NYC harbor literally stank like a skunk in summertime. Human waste poured into it and it was truly disgusting to even look at it, much less swim in that cesspool.

Third world nations are more like NYC 75 years ago. Pollution pours into all the rivers and into the sea, as the slums explode across the land, the land degrades rapidly. In the past, there was an upper limit to this sort of overcrowding: disease. Regular epidemics swept the cities and sometimes up to 50% of the population would die such as in the Black Death plague of 1346 in Europe, for example.

Nigeria produces over 2 million barrels of oil a day (currently valued at roughly $40 billion per year) which accounts for 90% of its export earnings and 80% of government revenue. Nigeria also supplies 9% of US imports and is the pillar in the US post 9/11 African oil strategy of the Bush administration which anticipates that the Gulf of Guinea will provide perhaps 25% of US imports by 2015. A multi-billion dollar oil industry is however a mixed blessing at best, and for most Nigerians nothing more than a fairy tail gone awfully wrong. To inventory the 'achievements' of Nigerian oil development is a salutary exercise: 85 percent of oil revenues accrue to 1 percent of the population; over three decades perhaps one quarter of $400 billion in oil; revenues have simply disappeared; between 1970 and 2000 in Nigeria, the number of people subsisting on less than one dollar a day grew from 36 percent to more than 70 percent, from 19 million to a staggering 90 million. According to the International Monetary Fund, oil 'did not seem to add to the standard of living' and 'could have contributed to a decline in the standard of living'. The anti-corruption chief Nuhu Ribadu (one of the few bright lights on a dark political landscape), claimed that in 2003 70% of the country's oil wealth was stolen or wasted; by 2005 it was 'only' 40%. Over the period 1965-2004, the per capital income fell from $250 to $212 while income distribution deteriorated markedly. Since 1990 GDP per capita and life expectancy have, according to World Bank estimates, both fallen. This isn't pretty.

Venezuela has similar problems: high crime, the population in the countryside streaming into makeshift slums, attempts at coping with all this is pushing the government to the limit. In Nigeria, there is little attempt at doing anything, it is swiftly becoming Haiti.

Haiti is a totally degraded environment and nearly everyone now congregates in the vast slums, the difference between slum and countryside nearly wiped out as the land is systematically stripped of everything. Even as modern medicine prevents many epidemics, Mother Nature has stepped in and using Haiti as a home base, she has launched her latest attack on humans: sexual diseases that spread easily but kill slow enough to allow the host body to infect as many people as possible.

The success of civilization in China has meant it has been the host of more than one epidemic. Even if a disease comes in from the countryside via immigration into slums, passing germs in a low-density environment is difficult, in a city, a lark. Simple flu viruses get launched in cities which quickly pass them to other cities via trade. Just like AIDS probably started in Africa, it traveled to Haiti and then literally flew into New York City and when the carrier had sex with just two ballet dancers, it spread like wildfire soon after that...I knew one of the very first victims and his startling and unexpected death from a rapid moving cancer.

The point here is, the rapid transmission of this deadly plague would not have happened if it weren't for large city populations. This was just barely 20 years ago and now AIDS has circumnavigated the entire planet and is now ravaging the mega-slums in Africa as well as Asia. We don't know the level of transmission in many Islamic lands yet but it will spread there, too, just by the mere fact that mega-slums are growing in these lands just as it is across the entire planet. Sexual diseases are particularly hard to suppress because they nearly universally cause the infected person to desire reckless sexual encounters.

These diseases spread as they are 'contained' if doctors find no vaccines for them like with smallpox, for example. This is why so many fear the appearance of the bird flu, if it becomes epidemic, for example. On isolated farms, it would flare and then flame out. But in a mega-slum, it would spread like wildfire. Across Africa, for example, as well as other lands, men are abandoning women and children because the mega-slum shelters everyone sufficiently they can multiply without building a village-society, each is 'alone' within the teeming hordes, there is no negotiations of influence and family responsibilities between clans. This leads to even more degradation and ill health and poverty as we see even in our own mega-cities.

The Shimizu TRY 2004 Mega-City Pyramid is a proposed project for construction of a massive pyramid over Tokyo Bay in Japan. The structure would be 12 times higher than the Great Pyramid at Giza, and would house 750,000 people. If built, it will be the largest man-made structure on Earth. The structure would be 2,004 meters (6,575 feet) high and would answer Tokyo's increasing lack of space.

Japan essentially has only one city and it sprawls across a large landscape, several cities having merged just like on the East Coast of the USA. The population of Japan is one third that of the USA and it is all concentrated in a much, much smaller area. And within this area, vast sections are being systematically depopulated as everyone moves to the capitol. Most First World cities are not stressed out like mega-cities in third world countries due to the entire population ceasing to reproduce anywhere near the rate of replacement. In the USA as well as much of Europe, immigration from African, South American or Central American peasants is populating potential slums which makes these cities look more like the overflowing cities of the Third World.

Japan has made this nearly impossible. There is some inflow of foreign population but mostly, the country is now retracting and consolidating: even as people retire, unlike in America or Europe, instead of moving to the countryside, this is actually increasing the movement to the mega-city.

To Mumford, "the city was primarily a storehouse, a conservator and accumulator" and "by its command of these functions . . . the city served its ultimate function, that of transformer." Mumford’s container imagery is flexible, and is equally applicable to physical aspects of urban design and to other nontangible characteristics, including influential ideas. The city’s role as container of "storable symbolic forms" has coincided historically with its function "as a self-contained" entity. "Glyphs, ideograms, and script," along with "abstractions of number and verbal signs," contribute to the pliable notion of city as container (City in History 97).

Associated with the container metaphor is the notion of the urban power "implosion." As civilization progressed, asserts Mumford, "the many diverse elements of the community hitherto scattered . . . were packed together under pressure, behind the massive walls of the city." The chief, the king, or a comparable leader played a major role in this urban development. "Under pressure of one master institution, that of kingship, a multitude of diverse social particles, long separate and self-centered, if not mutually antagonistic, were brought together in a concentrated urban area." This mutually-reinforcing combination of king and container helped to produce a reaction that could not have occurred, according to Mumford, had there been no implosion. Living in close quarters had its advantages. "As with a gas, the very pressure of the molecules within that limited space produced more social collisions and interactions within a generation than would have occurred in many centuries if still isolated in their native habitats, without boundaries" (City in History 34).

From the very beginning, cities pulled in population from the surrounding countryside. The many daily advantages of living in a city are very great. But whenever a city takes over the countryside, the civilization collapses quite thoroughly such as ancient Rome which became a fat goose rather than a strong entity, when barbarians poured across the denatured landscape. Constantinople grew bigger and bigger as it rotted internally and externally sucked the surrounding countryside dry, eventually it was unable to defend itself without a surrounding empire big enough to literally 'feed' the teeming mobs penned up within.

We have no record of the last days of Rome. The cultural collapse as the place became a mega-slum, was so total, there really wasn't anyone capable of writing about events as they unfolded. The mega-city of Alexandria was burned down and the population slaughtered, too.

"To achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers By 2020" -Target 11 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) -seems like a formidable task. However, for a group of experts on urban issues, this goal is not high enough. In 2002, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called upon development experts from around the world to develop concrete action plans to achieve the MDGs. Columbia University professor Elliott Sclar co-chaired Task Force 8, which was charged with Target 11.

Dr. Sclar and his team introduced a blueprint to not only achieve the goal of improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers, but also provide infrastructure, services and alternative housing to an additional 570 million people who would otherwise become slum dwellers by 2020. The report says that financing for these improvements could come from national and local governments in developing countries (55 per cent), the international donor community (35 per cent) and slum and low-income urban dwellers themselves (10 per cent). It also provides success stories from cities in the developing world, including Porto Alegre, Brazil, Amhara, Ethiopia and Tirana, Albania.

First off: Target 11? Whenever I see magic numbers attached to things like this (New World Order-type stuff) my alarm bells ring. The ruling elites are going to fix the slums with what? Money? I seem to recall what that means in America: we are seeing it in New Orleans. Displacing the poor and recovering the slums by sometimes very violent methods. Attempts at bringing better health services only makes the ultimate problem worse if there is no great social change. Redistributing income via revolution or war has been the classic solution to these sorts of problems. The looting of Rome caused it to cease being a mega-slum, for example. The Mongol invasion of China cleared out many cities. Indeed, they literally eliminated a host of major cities across Asia and into the Middle East as well as parts of Europe, stopping at the Nile in Africa and Vienna in Europe.

For all their technological infrastructure and complexity, cities remain, above all, great concentrations of human energy and resourcefulness. Indeed, Eric Jones, an economic historian, has argued that the rise of the West since the Middle Ages can be explained in part by the ease with which Western societies have recovered from disaster, as compared with African and Asian societies. Yet the myth of terrible urban vulnerability endures.

It is worth noting that contemporary prognostication about the effects of limited nuclear war resemble earlier predictions for air raids: both assume that the destruction of cities would come early in a conflict, that a relatively small number of warheads or bombs would spread destruction over a large area, and that such a level of destruction would cripple an enemy’s economic and social systems. Obviously, nuclear war is a new kind of war, of a new order of magnitude. But given that fact, is it possible that we have simply updated our old assumptions about the importance of technological infrastructures in cities to keep pace with the nuclear age?

Josef W. Konvitz, a professor of history at Michigan State University, is the author of The Urban Millennium: The City-Building Process from the Early Middle Ages to the Present (Southern Illinois University, 1985).

Wars have destroyed many cities. Some are rebuilt again and again but many eventually literally disappear from the map which is why looking at only one or two wars is meaningless. Troy was rebuilt a dozen times and then it died completely. Knossos was destroyed by a volcanic tsunami and never rebuilt. Rome rose, fell and only rose again after over 1,000 years and this due only to the fact a major religion made Rome its headquarters.

Paris and London have been destroyed and rebuilt. Both are capitals of their kingdoms. Berlin is a newish city, same age as New York City, actually. It was not touched much until WWII. It remained an important city purely by accident: four empires divided it into four parts and then fought over this division for 50 years.

Now Berlin could reassert its power as a capitol thanks to this historic accident.

Nuclear wars aren't like regular bombings. Cities swell with refugees fleeing the countryside if there is an invasion. Then the cities are bombed and many die. Cities are then rebuilt and filled again from the endless wombs of the countryside. But the people in cities usually die in major wars. In a nuclear war that drops multiple hydrogen bombs on all the mega-cities in the First World, there will be virtually no way to rebuild except on the time scale of the Dark Ages: a thousand years or more will pass before anything big rises from the ashes.

The explosive growth of the mega-slums can lead to a catastrophic war. Wars are all about 'Lebensraum'---room to live. The horrors of Darfur are the same thing: the countryside is being destroyed by mobs of people herding animals, seeking water and food while others attempt to farm on marginal lands. Meanwhile, factory farming, the 'green revolution' is feeding ever more people while driving peasants and subsistence farmers off their lands, driving them into the bulging slums climbing steep mountainsides and across mudflats.

This isn't a local problem, it is an epidemic that seems endemic to being human. Just as we gather together digitally on the internet, we are physically flowing towards various galactic monsters, the great Metropolis. This Mega Metropolis is an inviting target. It is also inherently unstable. This is why nuclear disarmament should be a very powerful force within our own vulnerable lands.

Comments

Paris is such a small town. Only Rome was like New York. They had unimaginable diversity. But diversity is so strangely opposed to cosmopolitanism. The world is full of fools living on faults. Most are filled with the false faith that is worse than no faith whatsoever. A million slimy things fell asleep, but I ranted on.

I really should do more humor here. For some reason, much of my writing of late is rather dark but then, this is appropriate for these times, I'm afraid.

I really got sick to my stomach when the Baker commission leaked their report. It showed how totally insane we really are. All the news since is even more insane.

It really is bothersome. Why can't people see things that are so painfully obvious? I was against executing Saddam, I knew he would go out in full glory as a martyr and sure enough, he did exactly that!

I recently entered that line on another blog. You know, people have accused me of calling myself 'blues' to cloak my 'real' identity as a troll! I always would show an ancient link in early 2004, where I just plucked that nom de blog out of the blue sky for the now-gone repentantnadervoter.org forum. That was before the advent of the blue-state/red-state paradigm. And I'm not black; and I don't play no musical instruments (I do fix amps...).

blues

It really means sweetening your sorrows into music. I have a very convoluted relationship with these words, you see. Sometimes I can even hear them.

"Just like AIDS probably started in Africa, it traveled to Haiti and then literally flew into New York City and when the carrier had sex with just two ballet dancers, it spread like wildfire soon after that..."

There's certainly something to be said for not hopping into the sack with just anyone. I engaged in some risky behavior in the 70s (didn't we all?) but I was lucky - I never caught anything worse than a cold. And I'd settled down by the time AIDS showed up.

Good God. What if it had been Target 17? But I suppose that's a "magic number" too (aren't they all?) Which raises a good question - are there any non-magical numbers?

From an environmental standpoint, you want most of the human population clustered into cities. Waste disposal, etc., is more efficient that way, and large segments of the countryside are not subjected to as many human depradations. The US Great Plains are gradually clearing as younger people quit the tiny towns in the middle of nowhere for more interesting places (and who can blame 'em?)

I don't want to start a FLAME WAR or anything like that (God forbid!). But I think I basically disagree with most everything JSmith just asserted. In any warped space, the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line. Then, do you think you might happen to reside in an unwarped space?

I should emphasize that I was appalled at the stupidity of lynching Saddam Hussein. After all, he was the only elected President of Iraq. And I don't even think Diebold had a hand in that. Besides, it comes with a 100% guarantee of severely ratcheting up the violence there. If you, JSmith, have any children serving there, the logic of that alone should persuade you.

Just cramming people into mega-cities is going to be MUCH more unhealthy than all but the most profligate libidinal wantonness. It cannot go on being six billion forever. But that is no excuse for some tin-badge fuhrer to go lighting up ovens.

The magic numbers thing is for insiders. If you don't get it, you probably aren't supposed to get it.

It was worse than a crime to hang Saddam it was a mistake (paraphrasing the old chestnut which remains true today!).

Mega-cities with mega-slums=tremendous violence capped by sweeping plagues. The health of Europeans improved tremendously after the Black Plague swept through, for example. The skeletons of the surviving populations were bigger and had fewer rickets, etc.

The psychological and social ramifications of urban dwelling are, I think, extremely important. Children raised in cities--even vibrant, wealthy cities--can develop a sad disconnect from the natural world. They do not understand natural processes and events. They find comfort in concrete, not nature. Point to a tree in Central Park and ask New York kids, "What kind of tree is that?" They most likely won't know or care.

City dwelling isn't inherently damaging psychologically, and I'm sure there are kids in New York who can identify more trees than I can. Nevertheless, American cities typically cram people together and then foolishly cultivate all kinds of ways to make the population anti-social and resentful (e.g., brutal police forces). Cities become pressure cookers, not communes.

There may also be political dangers for the ruling elites. If mega-cities develop a sense of self, an identity as a community, then we could see the return of bickering "city-states." A number of cities already hate each other over things as trivial as sports teams. Give them an equally unifying but more important point of focus and they might just start thinking of themselves as independent from the surrounding country.

First thing I did in NYC was join and form a group to plant trees which we got from various organizations which wanted to extend trees in cities.

I'm really good at blasting away at sidewalks, breaking up cement slabs or prying up slate. Protecting the trees was hard work. People carved them up, ran them over, yanked off branches and vandalized them a lot.

"Just cramming people into mega-cities is going to be MUCH more unhealthy than all but the most profligate libidinal wantonness. It cannot go on being six billion forever. But that is no excuse for some tin-badge fuhrer to go lighting up ovens."

How you get from mega-cities to ovens is... not readily apparent.

I grew up (childhood to highschool) in the country; our nearest neighbors were a mile down the road. The last thing I want is greater population density in the countryside. Then it's not countryside any more.

The problem, Smith, is that the larger the city, the greater its needs -- as in food, trees, animals, stone, minerals, coal, oil, medicinal plants, and even recreational areas for city people who "want to get away from it all".

That means your countyside will be appropriated for the use of city people, and you cannot stop them because they outnumber you and pass laws that allow them to plunder your land even while you sit on it.

Many people in Eastern Kentucky lost their homes, farms, and everything else because New Yorkers owned the mineral rights under their land. The coal was shipped to New York and other major cities. Eastern Kentucky was left as a honeycombed wasteland. I have seen it with my own eyes.

Only after war broke out did the bankers back off. The loss of equipment due to sabatage became too expensive. People were allowed to keep their homes and the mining companies had to dig under them or go away.

These protections came about because there were enough people living in the countryside in extended family groups to form a resistance to the city slickers. Otherwise, Eastern Kentucky would look like Haiti by now.

"That means your countyside will be appropriated for the use of city people, and you cannot stop them because they outnumber you and pass laws that allow them to plunder your land even while you sit on it."

Eastern KY got messed up decades ago. Best account of the subject I know of is Caudill's _Night Comes to the Cumberlands_.

Now... The exact opposite is occurring in places like Seattle: the greeners that live there are passing environmentally-friendly and quite restrictive laws that prevent those who live in the countryside from lumbering, selling their property to developers, etc.

What do you mean by this? No clearcutting? That's a good law. Cannot cut down a single tree anywhere? That's a bad law.

I am not against people cutting down a tree on their property to make some furniture or build a home for themselves, but clearcutting forests to pay off junk bonds or make a quick profit is something I am totally against.

Trees are too valuable to be wasted on chipboard and crap like that.

And yes, I know Eastern Kentucky was clearcut back at the turn of the century. I saw all the young trees as I moved through the new forest that grew up after the disaster. I also prevented my fellow surveyors from chopping down ancient trees just to get a "clearer line of sight".

It also prevented mountain men from gliding up the hills with a hounddog and a doublebarrelled shotgun wanting to know what the hell we were doing to their trees. They had long memories.

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